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Topic: Walking bot group project (Read 758 times)

Hello all.Today I had an idea about rawbots and thought to myself, "You dont see much walkers.." so I have a group project idea if anyone would like to work on something with me to make a walking bot that doesnt slowly inch forward, a bot that can walk normally around the planets.

Personally I consider this reasonably fast as far as walking bots are concerned (except uphill, maybe using the small wheels as feet would help with traction). Certainly moves in a much more efficient, lifelike manner than that mindstorms nxt bot I've made once. I actually think walkers in rawbots are relatively easier to build than in other sandbox games, the engine is suited for it. But that's just my opinion.

Also, if you want to do a bipedial walker, shifting a mass around for balance might be more elegant than using hovers, but thats also subjective. an ostrich body shape may work better than a human one? If you do a walking bot that has to support some weight, you should use motor based hinges since they are a lot beefier than elbows are. Heavy continuums also offers strong joints, so they might help if you want something sturdy.

Ah yes I remember the spider bot. Though my idea is to make a car bot that can run, (tribute to my special car lover) though we all know balance is one issue along with making a repeating system run safely and steady

This could be a big move foward to make things with fully functional legs I believe

Wasn't that one of Trooks bots? That was the sort of thing I was thinking would work best, perhaps with slightly longer legs and more ground clearance.

Using wheels as feet would work for larger bots, but they seem a bit big and heavy to be swinging around on smaller bots. I think the trick to getting good traction and smooth movement is to make sure there isn't any dead time in the cycle in which the foot is dragging on the ground or going in the wrong direction.

I think building a bipedal bot should probably wait until we get a more stable platform walking well.

as far as multiple legs walking there are two stances we possibly can take. Crocodile style sideways legs and inline legs like mammals have.crocodile legs are more stable while inline legs are faster. with that said there are other factors influencing that tradeoff like body width leg length etc. a narrow milliped bot is better with a wide stance but a wider squarer bot can do well with a narrower stance.

Also, I've just noticed how slow the default angle pid can be... One problem is that in real life pid updates at a very fast frequency, but in rawbots you're limited at the physics engine timestep essentially. Makes designing a fast AND accurate control system tricky.

Elbows on their own are pretty hopeless. Using a controller to set the velocity to hold an angle works well, but makes the code big and can become unstable.

I think using pistons to provide most of the propulsive force is a good thing to try and do, as they are very strong without a controller and don't tend to explode. Where possible, I usually try to use mechanical linkages or make things naturally stable so the physics engine does all the hard work instead of the VP code.

One relatively easy way to cheat the physics for stability would be to weight down continuum feet when touching the ground and lighten them up when they're leaving the ground, but that just feels wrong. I think that while the ability to change the weight of continuums is great by itself, the ability to do so with code in real time feels cheaty. In my ideal world, you only should be able to update the weight of a continuum by hand (as for instance the type of a math operation)